


Your hair was long when we first met

by Ibbyliv



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, Eating Disorders, Friends With Benefits, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Jehan's POV, M/M, R Ship Week, References to Drugs, Sex, Unrequited Love, past self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:38:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ibbyliv/pseuds/Ibbyliv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes when the sun is up we joke. We say that we are artists who lived again, two centuries ago in this very land, and died fighting for what they believed in (it was alcohol for you, that’s what you say. I know it wasn’t. I was there, even though I’d died first. That’s what you say. Those who stare at the future leave first, so that they can return first). Then we joke a little more. We say that people found our work after our deaths and published it. We spend hours reading poetry books and walking in art galleries to find which are closer to our style, which were the ones that made us famous without even knowing it because no one was there to tell us and the history book forgot about us. </p><p>I loved you first. </p><p>He loved you well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your hair was long when we first met

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for R ship week but I don't know if it really applies because it has an E/R ending and they both are in love with someone else? I'm sorry for any misunderstandings, I just really wanted to write this!  
> The whole thing is inspired by Regina Spector's 'Samson'.

Your hair was long when we first met.

Long, raven curls that reached past your shoulders, wild and frizzy sometimes, descending into black scruff on your cheeks, unwashed and shiny some others. You always had it pulled in a low ponytail or a messy bun on top of your head, like Éponine’s. You had always been inseparable, holding each other tight through every dream and every nightmare. Ever since you were kids, she said. Ever since you stole her cigarette at tenth grade and she punched you in the face, you correct. I remember wanting to be like you two, _with_ you two, something, I didn’t exactly know. I just wanted to fit in. I never fitted in, anywhere until I did, when they all embraced me and showed me what it was to have friends, but then with you, it was _different._

You always thought of yourself as obnoxiously ugly. Obnoxious, yes, you always had been. You thought Enjolras hated you. I thought so too in the beginning. Then I realized that he didn’t and I needed you to know, I needed you to feel better but I couldn’t because what if I gave you false hopes? What if you needed some time, both of you?

You never have been ugly. Your nose is unique, plethoric like the rest of you on your bright days, and you know how I love your happy days. Your raw skin is beautiful, your callused fingers feel like the sweetest hell when they trace over my skin, your thin, chapped lips kiss me like wine, sweet and harsh and tender, sometimes mind-taking. Your body is _real,_ it feels so when we dance together, when you grab me in your strong arms, from all the boxing and fencing and swirl me around. I love it when you dance in your black bodysuit and leggings and ballet shoes, showing every beautiful flaw of your flesh, and I wear what makes me feel pretty and _me,_ the pink tights and the ‘90s creepers and Éponine’s corset, Bahorel’s leather pants and that tulle skirt of Cosette’s, it’s so beautiful, so freeing… You change after dancing, in your gigantic dark hoodies and faded jeans, and you throw an arm around my waist as though we belong to each other but the most beautiful thing is that we don’t. Or you. You are the most beautiful thing. And those old scars on your wrists match mine.

Your hair was long, messy, dark and you never saw its beauty. You only saw beauty in Enjolras’ golden locks, you never stopped talking about them when we were high and God the things you said… You are a poet when you’re high but you don’t know it. Sometimes I write down what you say, those endless rambles, incoherent to everyone else but so meaningful and wise to my ears. I try to read them to you afterwards but you rip the sheets apart. I understand. I know that feeling very well.

I love you. I’ve always loved you and you have too. Not like I love _him_ or like you love Enjolras. Not the kind of love that makes you want to explode in a million pieces, disappear so that you can leave the other in peace, in the life you adore worshipping yet you don’t feel yourself worthy enough to interrupt, no. Not the kind of love that makes you a little dead on the inside when you realize you’re never going to have him, you wouldn’t even try because it’s not meant to be, you are different, he’s the light and you’re the dark, inhale, exhale, fire, ice, yes, no. Yes. Our love is different. It doesn’t make us ache, it sends the pain away. It doesn’t suffocate us, it gives us a little piece of sky to breathe on a rainy day.

There are good days, sunny and bright. I love the sun, you always tease me because the weather affects my mood so much when you know it affects yours just as equally. When the sun is up we joke. We say that we are artists who lived two centuries ago, in this very land, and died fighting for what we believed in (it was alcohol for you, that’s what you say. I know it wasn’t. I was there, even though I’d died first. That’s what you say. Those who stare at the future leave first, so that they can return first) and this is a next life. Then we joke a little more, that people found our work after our deaths and published it. We spend hours reading poetry books and walking in art galleries to find which are closer to our style, which were the ones that made us famous without even knowing it. Then we drink. And we smoke. You cease laughing after a while, but a shadow of a smile remains on your face, mysterious and distant. I keep laughing those days and it becomes almost hysterical, maniac after some time passes. I fall asleep on your chest, curled on the sofa which is full with popcorn and stained with ice cream and wine, or whiskey. Beer is for you and Éponine. She and I do tequila when we need to. I love her as I love you. In all the same ways. She understands. The only difference is that I always understand _you,_ apart from when I don’t. And that’s beautiful.

The history books forgot about us. But we never did.

When the mornings are cloudy you mumble that this is shit, that you’re not in the mood to joke. I say that I don’t want to joke. You reply that you don’t believe in past lives, you don’t believe in living, not really in dying. You don’t believe in second chances. It’s just darkness, clouds and this sleazy room with the patched mattress and the cold walls that suffocate you.

I know. I know they suffocate you. I know how you feel when nothing seems to go right. I know how you feel even when it does. Please believe me, I know. I know how it is when you don’t have the strength to keep the muscles of your body upright, to keep trying to stand on your feet and keep walking, when every step seems like a colossal struggle of something abnormal, something which isn’t meant to be. I know how it is when you want to let your body fall limp on the floor and curl there, staring at everything and nothing, begging for time to stop, for the world to stop just for a while because you need a break yet no one seems willing to give you one and the ticking of the clock goes on like the ticking of a time bomb in your head, suffocating you under the weight of the of the breaths you’ve let go to waste, of the seconds you did not try even though you see no point in it. I ask you to let me help you. And you do.

We drink and we knit, and it’s really wonderful and you look so proud of my scarf even though I know you hate purple and yellow together but you say it looks beautiful on my hair.

Sometimes I feel like that and you hate it because I don’t always eat but you and I know that having three meals a day isn’t really going to help us live, only survive, and sometimes it really _does_ seem hard to walk to the fridge or cook or get up from bed but you know, you understand. I accept food when you bring it to me. You never make me feel sorry, you’re just there and it’s enough.

Sometimes I can’t write and that’s the worst that can happen. Sometimes I’m useless, or maybe all the time apart from when I don’t know, but you never let me believe this because you draw my words on your body and they look beautiful on you, and then I can finally smile proudly.

Sometimes he looks at me, with his quirky green eyes and goofy smile and perfect, unruly curls, always cheerful and sweet, and my heart feels ready to fly until he turns his head away to look at someone else because that’s what he always does, but it’s not his fault. It makes him who he is and who he is is beautiful. It isn’t always easy after that. Sometimes I manage on my own. Not always.

You draw me then. I pose and you paint me in purples and yellows and oranges and aquamarines and I look at those canvases and see beauty even when I fail to find it in the mirror, even when I feel little and fazed, transparent on a world which will soon forget of me, in the future which I’ve always worshipped.

My hair was long when we first met. Our friends used to run their fingers through it, twirl them absent-mindedly around shiny locks. They all embraced what made me different from other people, they taught me to love myself for what I was and what I dreamt to be. My hair was long and sometimes you or Cosette or Feuilly braided it. You always suggested I fill my hair with flowers, after all I love them, but I told you I don’t kill what I love. You stayed silent, then agreed and added that what we love is what kills us. I thought a lot that night. I didn’t sleep. I got up from bed to find some water and found you throwing paint to a canvas, your body shaking and your eyes glowing with fever. It was the most savage sight my eyes had ever beheld. It was breathtaking. You let me join you and we painted with our brushes and our fingers and our toes and our knees, we painted with our lips until we were short of breath, when we started to kiss each other in order to share all the oxygen that was left inside of us.

He doesn’t know what he’s missing, you always mutter. I’m a glorious kisser, that’s what you say. Courfeyrac can shag everything with a pulse on this world, you exclaim, but he’ll never taste heaven and hell entwined if he doesn’t kiss the lips of Jean Prouvaire. I say that it’s a pity, not because my whole being lives to kiss him but because I want him to have everything, heaven and hell and all the angels. You say that he can go fuck himself, because he won’t know shit about angels until he has me. I say I'm no angel. You say of course I'm not.

Sometimes I think. You say I always do, it’s just sometimes that I realize I don’t _really_ want to think. I don’t want to count the years I’ve been here and the years after which I won’t be anymore. I don’t want to think of you, of him, of Enjolras and Combeferre, of Éponine and Bahorel and Feully, and all the dark things around us. I don’t _want_ to think dark, believe me I don’t. I’m afraid, sometimes and I hate to be afraid, to be weak.

Do you think anyone will remember us? Tomorrow? In ten years? In a century? Do you think anyone will say our names like sweet prayers or like burning curses? Will our ashes be thrown in the sea or will it be the Seine? I like the Seine. It’s the closer I can think to being written down in a history book. I want them to remember you. You are important, all of you and _you_ in ways you can’t imagine. I want to write about you, no matter how bad or good or boring, I will write on you as if you are my mantra, my shore, the air that kept me from asphyxiating. Don’t worry, no one will ever forget you. You will be written down in me, as will be Courfeyrac and Enjolras and everyone we love. We’ll live forever through the pages.

I can’t, I can’t think dark. I don’t, always. But sometimes I do. And then I realize I’m not me. I’m wrong, it’s wrong. I see the artificial flowers in my long plait, the faint rosiness that looks foreign on my pale as death cheeks, I see the colors on my clothes, the flowers and the cats and the stars on the patterns and it feels wrong even though that’s who I’ve always been, I see the rose tattoos hugging my wrists and hands and I want to scrape it all clear, I’m drowning in myself and I can’t stand it, I see the colors and I want to paint them black but we finished all the paint yesterday when we painted on each other and I feel naked in the bathroom. It’s wrong. I grab the scissors.

My hair was long when we first met. It isn’t anymore.

My fingers reached to touch my locks but a ginger braid was chopped off and shoved down the trash bin. My hands only met spiky emptiness on the nape of my neck, scruffiness on the top of my head. All I remember was smoking what Montparnasse had given me. It was bad this time. You came into my bed and said my hair was red, as if that was something new, as if I hadn’t been _born_ ginger. You simply said it was beautiful and you stroked my abused head with your raw hands, murmuring I was beautiful all over my skin. I remember punching you straight on the face. You tried to calm me down but I punched you in the stomach and you bent in two, gasping, so you punched me back. We fell on the cold floor, wrestling and you let me hit you until there was blood running down your nose. I burst into tears and you held me. I apologized, I hated myself but you said it was awesome and you bloody needed it. I didn’t want to look myself in the mirror. I hated every little thing. I thought of sticking my braid back to my head, of fuckin’ gluing it or sewing it on my scalp. It wouldn’t work. This wasn’t me. I didn’t know what _was_ me anymore. You said I didn’t need to. You said I was beautiful.

We fucked that night. Other nights we made love even though we never were _in love_ but it has always been precious, nothing that words can convey, nothing that needs to be described. It’s just there and it’s ours and no one can take it away or share it with us. It’s not pity, it’s not bitterness, it’s not sick or twisted or loving, yet it’s not a deal. It’s just _us_ plain and naked and exposed as we should be, as we should _all_ be and forever. I love the things I learn for you when I fuck you. I adore the things I learn for myself when you do.

Next morning we woke up lazy and took each other again. You took me in your mouth. I moaned and gripped on the sheets, shaking wholly until I finished in you. Then you took me to the bathroom. We showered, we shaved each other and you made me bend in front of the sink. You had purchased dye and when I finally raised my eyes to the mirror, the short, scruffy brush that served as my chopped hair was turquoise. Beautiful, you muttered and for once, I couldn't stop grinning.

You had me lay on the floor and you painted me. Branches and flowers and stars bursting all over my sides as if my chest had burst open, hugging my peeking bones and spreading on my shoulders and legs. The brushes were tickling my skin as always and it was uncomfortable when the paint dried and pulled but it only helped me decide to take control of myself. It was a sunny morning and stray sunrays entered through the window and wrapped me like the white sheets around my naked hips. You stood above me with your camera and made love to me through your lens. You had me pose while reciting Shakespeare and you gave me an orgasm at the same time with your fingers inside me, not allowing me to stop reciting all through my sighs and gasps. The pictures were beautiful and you convinced me I was too.

I’d never thought he’d care but he did. When I entered the café the next day, my hair short and turquoise, he stared at me, eyes wide open and jaw slack for a while. I had never been more ashamed for my appearance in my whole life, until he got up, not giving a flying fuck for the meeting and walked towards me. “Holy crap,” he muttered, and I wished for the Earth to open and swallow me in. “You’re beautiful.”

I stood there, gaping, my heart ready to explode from my chest. “You don’t have to do this…” I began, but he touched my chopped hair with his fingertips and I knew when Courfeyrac was being genuine. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

The rest of the day was bright, so bright that it almost blinded me, I found beauty in every single thing I saw, I felt light behind the clouds that shadowed the sky, in his eyes, in his smile, in the sound of his laughter, in his vividness, his dedication to our cause.

The next day he brought a girl to the café. My hair wasn’t turquoise anymore. Neither was it red. It was so short and spiky that it looked like a dirty shock of mousy brown in the mirror. I had lost this fight.

You had fought with him, once again. You had exchanged harsh words. You had mocked him and his beautiful face was pulled to a fierce, cold mask of marble. I knew how you wished to freeze time and look at him forever, believe me sweetheart, I knew that feeling very well and I wish I could do it for you, I wish I could freeze us forever with their eyes fixed in our own, not with pity or fury, just understanding. They never did. That’s why I’m here.

That night you came into the kitchen with a pair of scissors in your hands. I hate to admit that my heart jumped in my chest. Don’t blame me love for getting scared, I know it isn’t always easy, I know that sometimes I stop eating not because I want to become any more bony than I am, but because it seems like the only easy thing there is and I feel tiny, my insides feel tiny, my stomach too and I just can’t bring myself to do it. That’s why I have you and that’s why you have me.

Your hair was long when we first met. Long, raven locks, savage and dark and loud and obnoxious. So obnoxiously beautiful. So beautifully obnoxious.

It isn’t anymore. You asked me to do it. That was all you wanted yet it scared me more than anything else.

I sat you on a kitchen chair and wrapped a towel around your shoulders. I took the pair of dull scissors in my hands and saw your curls fall on the crappy old mosaic floor clipped from my own hands, in the dim light of the lamp. I saw them and I wept. I mumbled I was sorry. I gave you a mirror. You looked at your reflection. It wasn’t hideously chopped like my own. It was still done by a trembling hand yet it was more coherent but short, your hair barely there just enough to darken your scalp. I saw the dark circles under your eyes in the reflection, I saw the scruff on your cheeks, I saw your lips, rough and pressed together, your blue eyes pale and dull. You turned around and kissed my forehead, told me that I’d done alright. You kissed me till the morning light, sitting on the kitchen chair. I kneeled on the mosaic and took you in my mouth, tasting you once, twice, held your callused hands tightly in mine, feeling your skin tighten and twitch with your every moan. I wanted to show you that you hadn’t lost your power, you hadn’t lost anything. I loved you, I _love_ you, maybe more than before. Just not like that. It’s not the love which makes you desperately seek for the light in each other’s eyes, no. It’s the love that makes you embrace their darkness and clasp one’s hands tightly as if your life is hanging on it and your death even more, and breathe together through the smothering tightness of the tiny kitchen.

You took me that night. It was harsh and intense at first, then we slowed our pace and tasted every clammy inch of the other’s skin. I remember my tongue all over your gorgeous tattoos, Icarus on your back, the grapevines and flames on your strong arms, a few words on your lower back. You tasted all of the poetry on my wrists and sides, the aggressiveness on my hipbones and the roses and thorns you had designed yourself on my hand and shoulder blade. Most of the times we’d moan other names while we finished, you never got angry of being called _Courfeyrac_ and I was more than glad to serve as your marble God of light behind your shut eyes. Some others we’d cry each other’s name, trembling like the most precious mantra between our gritted teeth, caressing our lips like the gentlest balsam before it escaped them. It was one of those times, one of the times when I’d thought that even if I never heard my name from any other lips it would be alright, because only you could make it sound like the darkest, most sacred prayer that no angel could sing as good as you. We were sprawled on the floor, swallowing smoke orgasmically from the same cigarette, sharing each breath that mocked death because we _had_ this, we had this in our hands. We could do it. You went to bed and pleaded me to eat. I had some bread, then a little more and joined you. You cradled me as if I was a baby.

I felt well the next day, I went to classes and then to a poetry reading. I returned to find that you had relapsed. It was okay. We both knew it was okay. It wasn’t always easy. We would get through this together. I wrapped my arms around you as you shook like a leaf, emptying the contents of your stomach in the toilet, only this time there was no hair to hold back. You were shaking so much that I was scared. We curled together on the bathroom floor and I sang to you. You gripped on my shirt and begged me not to go. You said you’d lost this. You said you’d lost your power. You said you couldn’t paint. You almost convinced me that day, you know. Don’t do this, love. Please, never try to convince me. Please, let me be wrong because in the end I might be right. Give me the chance to always apologize.

The walls seemed to tumble down over and over again. Until he came.

You didn’t want to see him and I threatened to punch him in the face but he forced his way in your room. I watched through the crack of the door. You’d always called him a God yet now you looked like a fallen one, believe me darling, more than you could ever imagine. You always looked bigger even though he was taller. Your shoulders were wide and your hair wild. Now you looked tiny, your shoulders slumped, your eyes blank. You didn’t fight, you didn’t shout. You let him wrap his arms around you, your blue eyes wide open in muted shock. My heart was ready to explode and I knew that it beat in the rhythm of your own. I saw your hint of a smile behind his shoulder. I smiled myself. It was beautiful, _you_ were beautiful. Both of you. I was happy, insanely happy.

So happy that the smile caused the muscles of my mouth to ache and I kind of felt it freezing on my face. So happy that a tiny part of me, a part that longed for my naïve long, shiny hair and the artificial flowers and Courfeyrac’s vivid laughter on a summer morning, wanted to cry.

I loved you first. He loved you well.


End file.
